Playbills speak to history

The Bell Curve

May 20, 2010|Joseph N. Bell

I went to the theater Sunday afternoon, and, as is my custom, took the Playbill to my office afterward and added it to a shelf in my bookcase that has been housing a steadily growing family of Playbills for the past 50-some years. They pretty much chart my cultural life for all those years and, I guess, also define the parameters of my soul.

When I added Sunday's Playbill to my collection — also as is my custom — I lingered over the shelf. That was both a mistake and a joy. It shot my evening plans, but it also transported me back to the treasures that are still almost as vivid to me as they were at the time I experienced them. Reliving them always makes me realize, once again, how important theater has been in my life. And how good and accessible it is where I live.

These shows enriched and influenced my early adult years just as the movies of the 1930s shaped my adolescence. And in some mystical way, they continue to follow a pattern my wife and I set in 1956, when I was offered a pair of fourth-row seats to "My Fair Lady" early in its run. We cleaned out our savings to fly to New York from our home in Chicago, and today I wouldn't sell for all the money in Goldman Sachs the memory of Rex Harrison standing on his doorstep only a few feet away from me singing, "I've grown accustomed to her face."

Advertisement

Just as vivid in reverse was "Camelot," Lerner and Lowe's first Broadway show after "Fair Lady." It had a terrific cast headed by Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, and I went looking for the same high — and lost it in the first few minutes of the second act. I saw "Camelot" three times in New York, hoping these superb craftsmen would finally fix that second act so I could sustain my euphoria. They never did.